Environmental Chemical Exposure and Human Health

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a Special Issue on “Environmental Chemical Exposure and Human Health.”

Environmental chemicals, from industrial pollutants to endocrine disrupting chemicals, pose significant risks to human health, particularly during critical windows of development and across generations. The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that nearly 24% of global deaths are linked to environmental factors, with early-life exposures influencing lifelong health trajectories. This Special Issue seeks to advance understanding of how chemical exposure impacts health, from preconception through adulthood, while exploring innovative strategies to mitigate risks and elucidate biological mechanisms.

Mounting scientific evidence demonstrates that environmental chemical exposures contribute substantially to adverse birth outcomes, developmental impairments, and multi-generational health effects through epigenetic mechanisms. Concurrently, breakthroughs in exposome science and multi-omics approaches (including epigenomics, metabolomics, and proteomics) are revealing previously unknown exposure-disease pathways. The integration of these mechanistic insights with population-level prevention strategies represents a critical opportunity to mitigate the worldwide impact of environmentally mediated diseases across the lifespan.

This Special Issue will feature research on the following topics:

• Life-course chemical exposure and health outcomes;
• Transgenerational effects of chemical exposure;
• Mitigation measures targeting modifiable factors, such as behavioral factors;
• Exposome and omics approaches to identify biomarkers and mechanistic pathways;
• Molecular mechanisms of toxicity.

We invite original research, systematic reviews, and methodological papers that address these themes, with a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration among environmental health, toxicology, epidemiology, and public health.

Dr. Yu Zhang
Prof. Dr. Jason Levy
Prof. Dr. Stefano Falcinelli
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Environments is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.